News from the Native Americas – US Government Continues To Want Their Land

Standing Rock is burning – but our resistance isn’t over

Just north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, water protectors set their makeshift and traditional structures ablaze in a final act of prayer and defiance against Energy Transfer Partner’s Dakota Access Pipeline, sending columns of black smoke billowing into the winter sky above the Oceti Sakowin protest camp.

The majority of the few hundred remaining protesters marched out, arm in arm ahead of the North Dakota authorities’ Wednesday eviction deadline. An estimated one hundred others refused the state’s order, choosing to remain in camp and face certain arrest in order to defend land and water promised to the Oceti Sakowin, or Great Sioux Nation, in the long-broken Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851.

On these hallowed grounds, history tends to repeat itself. In 1890, police murdered Sitting Bull on the Standing Rock reservation out of suspicion that he was preparing to lead the Ghost Dance movement in an uprising. Two weeks later the United States Cavalry massacred more than three hundred Lakota at Wounded Knee. Over 126 years later, the characters and details of the stories that animate this landscape have changed, but the Cowboys and Indians remain locked in the same grim dance.

The first whirlwind month of Donald Trump’s presidency has brought the injustices of racism, capitalism, and patriarchy long festering beneath the surface of American society out into the open. The eviction of Oceti Sakowin from their treaty lands forces us to confront another foundational injustice, one rarely if ever discussed in contemporary politics – colonialism.

For many, it is contentious and even laughable to suggest that colonialism endures in the present. In the American popular imagination, colonialism ended either when the 13 colonies declared independence from Britain in 1776, or when John Wayne and the 6th Cavalry blasted away Geronimo and the Apaches in Stagecoach.

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Colonialism, according to these narratives, is history.

The eviction of Oceti Sakowin suggests otherwise. But in order to see the big picture in all its unjust and ghastly detail, we must take in the full shame of America’s treatment of the Standing Rock Sioux and the first people of this land.

At Standing Rock, 41% of citizens live in poverty. That is almost three times the national average. The reservation’s basic infrastructure is chronically underfunded. Schools are failing. Jobs are few and far between, and 24% of reservation residents are unemployed. Healthcare is inadequate. Many depend on unsafe wells for water. Roads are often unpaved. Housing is in short supply, substandard and overcrowded. If the people of Standing Rock did not take-in their beloved family and friends, there would be mass homelessness.

Dakota Access Pipeline’s price tag of $3.8bn is nearly $1bn more than the entire budget of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren is said to be worth $4.2bn. The pipeline will pour even more wealth into his pockets.

Meanwhile, Standing Rock will remain in poverty on the margins. The most expensive piece of infrastructure in their community will not be the schools, homes or hospitals they desperately need. Instead it will be a pipeline that they have vehemently opposed.

This is how the first people of this land live in the forgotten Bantustans of the American West.

This system, an essential foundation of the United States, is rooted in the theft of indigenous land and the ongoing disavowal of indigenous sovereignty. Indigenous presence must be confined, erased and then forgotten, so that the United States may continue to live upon and profit mightily from lands taken from indigenous people.

The erasure of indigenous people explains why Dakota Access was rerouted from upstream of Bismarck south to Standing Rock. It explains why pipelines can be hammered through Native communities without regard to their treaties and indigenous, constitutional and human rights. It explains why a multi-billion dollar pipe can be drilled through Standing Rock before long-needed basic infrastructure is built. It explains how, after months of unprecedented protests and visibility, Trump can claim that he received no complaints about the pipeline. It explains how Oceti Sakowin can be wiped off the map.

It is impossible to describe the totality of this picture of land theft, containment, poverty, oppression, policing and extraction as anything other than colonialism.

But from the moment that colonialism ensnared land and life, indigenous people fought it – none more than Sitting Bull and his kin, the Oceti Sakowin.

They have lit a fire on the prairie in the heart of America as a symbol of their resistance, a movement that stands for something that is undoubtedly right: water that sustains life, and land that gave birth to people. In its ashes there is the potential for a more just future for this land, this water, and all the nations and people who share it.

CANNON BALL, N.D. – Police in riot gear began arresting the last remaining protesters at a makeshift camp in North Dakota on Thursday after they defied several orders to leave the area.

It’s unclear if any protesters remained at the camp after the police officers raided it.

The raids came after the eviction orders were unenforced for at least a day. Hundreds left peacefully on Wednesday after the 2 p.m. deadline, and 10 were arrested hours later after they taunted cops. But out of the tens of thousands that once called this prairie home, Gov. Doug Burgum said late Wednesday that 50 remained.

But hours later, 18 National Guardsmen and dozens of law officers entered the camp from two directions, along with several law enforcement and military vehicles. A helicopter and airplane flew overhead.

Officers checked structures and began arresting people, putting them in vans to take to jail. About two dozen people were arrested in the first half hour of the operation, according to Levi Bachmeier, a Burgum adviser.

North Dakota originally offered protesters a carrot. If they agreed to leave peacefully, they would receive a hotel room and bus ticket to anywhere in the U.S. As of Wednesday night, none had taken it. They also offered a courtesy or ‘ceremonial arrest’ for anyone needing a picture for their Facebook page. Again, no takers.

A 17-year-old girl and 7-year-boy old were burned after protesters set fire to the last remnants of the camp. They both required medical attention and one was air lifted to Minneapolis because her injuries were severe.

Now the cleanup efforts begin. The camps span more than 1,000 acres, which had been, according to state officials, sensitive wildlife habitat. Now, because of an early thaw and thousands of “water protectors” it is a wet, muddy cesspool of human waste and hazardous fuels after protesters turned the native grassland into a dumping ground.

According to the Col John Henderson of the US Army Corp of Engineers, crews have already removed some 250 truckloads of trash, but his agency plans to spend upwards to $1.2 million of taxpayer money to rehabilitate the area.

“To ensure that none of this garbage and waste and debris and structures and vehicles ended up in the reservoir. That would be an absolute environmental catastrophe,” Henderson said.

Most of the protesters who spoke to Fox News said fighting the pipeline was a life-changing experience. They didn’t want the moment to end.

“I went home for a little bit but I came right back because I missed all of the people here. I missed the feeling.” said protestor Clarence Rowland, bundled up in a red sweater and purple hat as he walked around the few remaining tents in one of protestor camps.

Fellow protestor Genevieve Hock said she learned so much by being part of the demonstrations.

“We don’t have to all have our own houses and cars…” Hock said. “We can work together and share resources and honestly live better and work less.”

Border Wall Would Cut Across Land Sacred To Native Tribe

The proposed border wall between the U.S. and Mexico would run right through Native lands, and tribal leaders in the region say it would desecrate sacred sites.

“Over my dead body will we build a wall,” says Verlon Jose, vice chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation. “It’s like me going into your home and saying ‘You know what? I believe in order to protect your house we need some adjusting.’ And you’re going to say, ‘Wait a minute, who are you to come into my house and tell me how to protect my home?’ ” he says.

The Tohono O’odham reservation straddles the U.S.-Mexico border about an hour south of Tucson. Tohono O’odham means people of the desert.

On a recent drive through the Sonoran desert — where rain has made the palo verde trees even greener and the saguaro stand a little taller — Jose points to a cactus plant. He says every living thing has a story and each story comes with a teaching.

“And I always tell people that every stick and stone is sacred. The rocks that you see along the road have meaning. Sometimes you refer to them as ‘the grandfathers,’ ” he says.

The Tohono O’odham people believe their creator lives in the holiest of rocks, Baboquivari Peak; President Trump’s wall would cut across this mountain range — as well as sacred burial ground.

Jose says they’re not asking the Trump administration to get out. The tribe is asking them to collaborate.

“We’re not your enemy. We’re your ally. We want to work with you in protecting America,” he says.

‘Legal Limbo’

The Tohono O’odham agreed to a vehicle barrier along the border a decade ago. But it hasn’t prevented people from crossing, and the tribe is overwhelmed by the number of border-crossers.

Before the Obama administration ramped up border enforcement, the tribe saw 1,500 people a day trying to cross the desert illegally. That number has since dropped significantly, but it’s still high for a tribe with few resources. In 2010, half of Arizona’s migrant deaths occurred on the Tohono O’odham Nation.

The Tohono O’odham feel like outsiders. Tribal members are U.S. citizens who can cross onto the Mexico side of the reservation. But since Sept. 11th and an influx of people from the south, the Tohono O’odham are restricted to one entry point on the reservation or U.S. ports of entry hours away. Trump says his plan to build a wall and to hire significantly more federal agents will stop border crossings.

“As I’ve said repeatedly to the country, we are going to get the bad ones out — the criminals and the drug dealers and gangs and cartel leaders. The day is over when they can stay in our country and wreak havoc,” Trump said last month.

It’s still an open legal question how much authority the president has through executive order to build a wall on Native land.

“We’re really in legal limbo, and I think that’s a cause of great anxiety on the part of tribal peoples,” says Rob Williams, a professor at University of Arizona’s Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program.

However, Williams says Congress would have the power.

“Congress can basically condemn Indian land as long as it pays fair market value,” Williams says. “Any tribe that would seek to resist — particularly congressional legislation that would take that land or appropriate that land for a wall, for example — would have very few avenues opened to it.”

The Tohono O’odham Tribe has invited Trump to visit the reservation. They believe only then, when sitting amidst an army of saguaros and on the sacred mountain Baboquivari, will the president understand that he needs to work with the tribe to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.

Here is an update on what is happening with our Native peoples. As I am sure you noticed, now there is another tribe fighting against the American government.The Tohono O’odham Tribe is fighting Trump because his wall goes straight through their sacred lands. They will need our help and support.

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I am a retired widow with 4 kids and 9 grands. I worked as a nurse, and in Domestic Violence, and many non-profits, I was a donor health counselor for the American Red Cross and am a certified HIV counselor. I worked as a counselor and I have been a make-up artist and selling specialists for several American designers. I love life. I am very spiritual. I grew up in 50's and 60's and truly am the idealistic rebel which is the name of my blog. I love music, books, reading, Kindle, beauty. I am a photographer and an artist. I believe in making the world better one day at a time. I am now living in Asheville, NC.